Christian A.A. Days and the Unchanging God
As Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson described it, a battle took place over the wording of Bill’s proposed Twelve Steps. It occurred as the Big Book manuscript was being readied for the printer. Four people were present: Bill Wilson, Bill’s partner Henry Parkhurst, John Henry Fitzhugh Mayo, and the secretary Ruth Hock.
Cofounder Bill and the other Cofounder Dr. Bob Smith had consistently and many many times described Almighty God in terms that plainly came from the Bible, the Bible that both men had studied as youngsters in Vermont, and the Bible that was taught to them in their Sunday schools, daily chapel, and the Vermont Congregational Churches of their youth.
Dr. Bob quite simply had referred to God as God, Creator, and Heavenly Father.
Bill had frequently referred to God as Almighty God, Creator, Maker, Heavenly Father, Father of lights, as well as the “God of the Scriptures” and the “God of the preachers.”
In fact, before the battle in the office and the adoption of compromise language, Bill said he had consistently used the word “God” without qualification in all of the manuscripts. But Bill’s partner argued, pleaded, even urged that Bill must take out the word “God.” Even then, Bill retained the unqualified Scriptural references to “God” over 200 times.
The Manuscript Compromise that Purported to “Change” the “god” of the Twelve Steps
However, Bill then deleted the word “God” from the Second Step language and replaced the word with the phrase “Power greater than ourselves”—language frequently used by Oxford Group writers and leaders like Rev. Sam Shoemaker. In Steps Three and Eleven, Bill changed the word “God” to “God as we understood Him.” And that